How to Be Black

by Baratunde Thurston

  So maybe we don’t get tens of millions of people to sit around the national table and discuss race. We just start putting our ideas out there, yet how do we actually attack contemporary problems? We do what some of the most successful American businesses do. We outsource and collaborate!

  I’m not suggesting we directly ship anti-racist warrior jobs to Indonesia to take advantage of less expensive labor, but the gist of the plan is to spread the costs of Black Struggle Operations across a larger base.

  Outsourced struggle?

  Certainly part of being black in America is acknowledging “the struggle,” but there’s got to be more to it than that. Blackness has got to be more than suffering and fighting racism. In 2007 the NAACP held a symbolic funeral for the word “nigger.” I don’t think this has led to any reduced usage of the word, but the idea inspired me. Since then, I’ve wanted to hold an actually meaningful ceremony making the destruction of racism the official responsibility of white people. It would be like passing off the Olympic torch. You could literally have a black person holding a flaming baton whose dancing flames spell RACISM, and he or she would hand it to a white person, and then it would be their problem. We could stream it on the Internet!

  damali firmly agrees with the core of this proposal.

  There’s only so much we can say to white people anymore about this, because we’ve been saying the same things to white people for generations, decades upon decades. It is now really up to them. You’re going to learn it or not. You’re going to take care of it or not.

  I’ve done workshops where I have literally taken all the people of color out and left the white people and said, “Your job is to end racism, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You set it up. Take it down.”

  I like it: shock doctrine for ending racism.

  Do you know what would happen to black people if we could hand over responsibility for ending racism to white people? Our high blood pressure would subside. We would live longer. We would smile more! Kamau could do a different one-man show! And for white people, it’s a good deal, too. Fighting racism builds character, and makes you a better person.

  Let’s do this, America!

  Collaborative struggle

  The program of Distributed Struggle doesn’t end with handing the racism baton to White America. Kamau introduced a concept I wish I could take credit for.

  Black people get so caught up in the black struggle that we forget to be caught up in other people’s struggles. And we forget to realize that we should be just as concerned about their struggles as our struggle. And it’s really sort of frustrating me.

  Any black person who’s not with the people in Arizona, on the side of the immigrants, you’re an asshole. Not that it’s the same thing, but these are all struggles of oppressed people. Any black person who’s like, “Gay marriage???” Let me just sit you down and talk to you for half an hour. I get you think gay is creepy. But other than that, there’s no way you should be [opposed].

  I’ve recently come to the conclusion: I think that all people who are fighting for oppressed people should only be allowed to work for the group that’s one over from them. Black people should only be allowed to work for the Mexican immigrants’ struggle in America. Mexican immigrants should only be allowed to work for gay marriage. Gay marriage should only be allowed to work for black people. I feel like if we all just stepped one group over, I think we would get things done a lot quicker.

  You can’t end racism and make sexism worse. You can’t end racism and make homophobia worse. You have to put it all forward . . . So a big part of my how-to-be-black is actually trying to be inclusive of all the struggles. Slow clap.

  Yes, he actually said “slow clap” at the end of his statement. I had to leave it in!

  The first two components of the Comprehensive Plan for New Blackness are about clearing items off the runway. A better understanding of our history and a shared sense of responsibility for “The Struggle” should help lighten the burden we often feel as black people in America.

  In terms of history, it’s worth considering that while black Americans share history with the rest of the Diaspora, we aren’t bound by it in the same way as other groups are by their culture’s expectations. We are uniquely American, and America is young. Jacquetta compared this to older cultures that might feel threatened by a new thing.

  It’s the Wild, Wild West of African-Americana out there. You don’t have to stick to five thousand years of a traditional culture.

  There are some cultures which are like, “No, that is not Jewish, and that is what we do not do.” I have a lot of Jewish friends, and every single one of them have told me that their parents are like, “Jews do not run.” So then they don’t do sports, because there’s five thousand years of a wonderful tradition that they feel like is telling them that. We don’t have that. You can do whatever you want.

  There’s no road map for being black.

  So where do we want to go, black people?

  3. The Center for Experimental Blackness

  This is the fun part. I just want you to know that when I started this book, I had no idea it was going to become a program for the Evolution of Blackness, okay? But it is, so pay attention.

  One of the most consistent themes in my own experience and those of The Black Panel is this notion of discovering your own blackness by embracing the new, the different, the uncommon, and, simply, yourself.

  For Kamau, it was finding an eclectic mix of pop-cultural role models that allowed him to “assemble my own version of blackness.”

  Growing up, because I didn’t feel black the way society told me I was supposed to be black (and I think I was squeezed out by white people and by black people where I grew up), [that] really allowed me to sort of find my own way. In that sense I felt like I’ve always leaned towards an eclectic way of putting things together . . . I feel like that’s one of the strengths of the way that my approach is. I don’t feel closed out of things.

  For Elon, it was about embracing his passion for putting information into the world.

  Black people define blackness with everything we do. So, right now I’m shooting this video and someone’s sitting there in their house thinking, “Ah man, black people love shooting videos on green screens,” because I’m defining it. People are like, “Why do you have servers in your house?” I’m like, “Because I need information, this is how I put stuff out there.” Because black people like computers, son! We love server farms, we like LAN gaming, and we define it every time we do something.

  For damali, it was about connecting blackness to themes far beyond race, such as sustainability and eco-living.

  Black people can be more than professional black people. I had an eco-friendly clothing company for a while, and I’m really passionate about sustainability issues. These things are not separate.

  My role model for the sustainable community is the Sea Island settlers, who were the black people who moved to this island after slavery. Because, of course, what were they really good at? Farming. They set up a community, grew their own food, had their own schools. They were separate. They were a nation unto themselves, and then the government shut them down. It was too threatening.

  That is something that black people own, that self-sustained community. That’s my history, so it’s always connected for me and I get really excited about that.

  So be open-minded. We are too young a people to accept the limitations placed on us by some in our own community or especially by those outside of it. As Jacquetta said well, “There’s no perk in being closed-minded as a minority. It’s never, ever, ever going to help you, ever. It’s not your world . . . We’re 12 percent. We’re a minority, so get off it.”

  Jacquetta also took this idea of pushing the envelope of blackness even further than being open-minded. She has a program in mind.

  If I had a lot of money, you know how Jewish people have birthright? I would give every African-American boy or girl, when they turn sixteen, one ye
ar somewhere else, wherever they want to go, to go and experience what it feels like to be black somewhere else.

  When I went abroad as an African-American, when I went to Western Europe, when I went to Eastern Europe, and particularly when I was in Hungary, I had people come up to me and go, “Oh, you’re American! Are you a teacher or are you dentist or doctor?” I thought I was going to fall on the floor.

  Don’t believe what you see here. The way that people want you to see yourself through the media, and that’s pretty much all you’re getting, is not really the way that we are seen everywhere. Go and meet African Germans, African British people, African Dutch people, African Chinese people, African African people.

  Go outside and see what is out there in the world. Do not be trapped in this incredibly narrow definition.

  One of the challenges emerging in an era of Open Source Blackness (you like how I keep creating new big labels?) is a growing gap in the common experiences of the black community itself. As Jacquetta put it:

  All of a sudden, black people just start doing crazy stuff, like that guy who was doing speed skating. When did brothers start doing that? Just crazy. And then they’ll want to go to Harvard, and then they’ll want to travel, and then they’ll start doing mad stuff. And then what do we have left there? What will be the common experience?

  However, that reality exists today. That’s part of the point of this book, right? Being black can be a different set of experiences. Jacquetta acknowledged this case of “the center not holding” in her own story.

  My husband is white. He is a Cyprian-American, and we have more in common than I do with black people I’ve met who are just from LA. I just can’t understand where they’re coming from, because they are from a different region of the country . . .

  Or people from Chicago, who I don’t get. African-Americans from Chicago, they have a whole different way of living that, for me, for a black person from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, it’s difficult to bridge that gap. There should be an app for that, I think.

  The app would allow African-Americans of different classes, socioeconomic status, and political affiliation to communicate [with] each other without beef, kind of like a Rosetta Stone situation to eliminate beef and misunderstanding.

  I hereby dub this app the “Negretta Stone.” Yes, I went there. And now you wish you had thought of it. Check your local app store for downloads.

  Are you keeping up? We’ve got experimental blackness abounding at this point, but how do we make it stick? How do we replace the overwhelming media images of limited blackness with a more expansive concept?

  It’s already happening. You’ve got the Afro-Punk movement and Black Geeks and the black people who love nature, and more. You look at what people like Elon are doing with media production, and they are getting new ideas, new images, and new expectations out there. It’s not enough just to be black in your own way. We also have to tell the broader story of blackness to counter the damage inflicted on us by the narrow tale told by others. That’s where Cheryl’s vision comes into the picture.

  I think that we’re living through almost a second Harlem Renaissance. But I would say that the scope of that Renaissance is much bigger than it was in the 1920s, and it’s powered by social media, so it can reach a lot more people than it could before. In the 1920s, when you’re talking about Harlem or Paris, it was a very small group of intellectuals, artists, poets, singers, dancers that were in conversation with each other, and ultimately it had a ricochet effect over time in the popular culture.

  But right now, we’re starting to drive that culture in a contemporary way, and in a way that they couldn’t before, because they couldn’t really reach that many people, given what they had at that time. [But] right now, we’ve got this thick stew of people in heavy conversation not only with each other, as you saw in the Harlem Renaissance, but with the larger group . . .

  That is really exciting for what it means for the future of African-Americans in this country and the cultural impact, the economic impact, the social impact that we can have in a positive way that also is shared with the larger culture.

  I think that the people who are coming up behind us are even more literate with these tools, are even faster communicators. We are going to see this amazing uprising in a positive way of African-American thought and music and art that will astonish the world.

  Booyah! I can see it, too, and my skin tingles at the thought. In many ways what led me to the people I ultimately interviewed for this book was the faster-than-history communications network we have nowadays. Elon’s videos, Cheryl’s blog posts, Derrick’s music, et cetera. All of these are part of this more global, collaborative resurgence of black culture and thought (what Derrick would call “Afropolitan”), and when it comes from the bottom up like this, it challenges the prevailing and limited images of blackness peddled by our major media but also the limited expectations of many black people themselves.

  So, black people, let’s repeatedly put out information about our own images of blackness, be it fighting for justice or making videos on a green screen or hosting TV shows on Al Jazeera or camping or writing books about the infinite possibilities for how to be black. As Elon put it: “Don’t let someone tell you what you should do because you’re black. You do what you want to do, and then you open up the doors of blackness.”

  As Shakespeare wrote, “There are more ways to be black than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”* Dream bigger. Just be, and the blackness will follow.

  AFTERWORD

  Race Work and Art—The Black Panel Speaks

  I grew up watching and listening to all sorts of comedy, most of which was introduced to me by my mother. On our budget vacations, we would tear through Old Time Radio comedies on the car stereo: Lum & Abner and George Burns & Gracie Allen; Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion; and stand-up comedy tapes of Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, and Richard Pryor.

  We never had cable television in our home (I didn’t get cable until after graduating college), but we loaded up VHS tapes of Eddie Murphy, obviously supported shows like The Cosby Show and A Different World, and my mom got me into British sitcoms. Thanks to PBS, we could get shows like One Foot in the Grave, Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances, and my favorite, Chef!, which starred a black man as a perfectionist chef whose command of his kitchen was powered by a seemingly inexhaustible fusillade of verbal putdowns.

  In high school, I expanded on my own performing life and began doing plays and musicals with social messages. My time at Sidwell Friends was a big part of this experience. Every year I attended, we put on a Black History Month musical review, and out of this experience, I discovered the youth activism and theatre group City at Peace.

  My childhood, as designed by my mother, didn’t just feature an introduction to comedy and art, but it also introduced me to the concept of art as a communications medium for ideas and even activism. My stand-up comedy has always been political at its core, and even my Web-based performance art pieces have a component of advocacy and social message (I once treated a mayoral contest within the mobile application Foursquare as a real-world political campaign). How to Be Black exists very much in line with that tradition, and while I definitely intend for it to be funny, there is a message in it.

  Along my own artistic road, I have encountered others similarly engaged, people who tell stories but in a style far more accessible than straightforward lectures. It was from this group that I selected my interview subjects for The Black Panel. I knew that the topic “How to Be Black” was bold, massive, and possibly presumptuous on my part. I recognized that many people could write a book with such a title, and some have and more will. After all, being black is just being, right?

  So to augment my own limited experiences and voice, I wanted to recruit my comrades in the arts to this mission. In addition to the questions you’ve seen them answer throughout the book, I asked them directly about their writings, videos, songs, and performances. I wanted to know w
hy they chose that path to say the things they thought needed saying about race and politics in America.

  It has always been my goal with this book to shine a spotlight on people who I thought were “doing blackness well,” and so in the spirit of show-don’t-tell, I want to more fully introduce you to the work of The Black Panel. Let’s start with Christian Lander, the white man from Canada.

  CHRISTIAN LANDER

  The website Stuff White People Like swept through America like a sort of political tract. “Have you seen this website?” people would ask. I’d get e-mails from friends and strangers, “Yo, check this out. It’s a site about white people!” It was through this word-of-mouth Internetting that I discovered Christian, but when I really gained respect for him was the spring of 2010.

  We were both slated to speak on a panel at a conference on Internet culture, called ROFLcon. Our topic was “Race and the Internet.” Along with Terese and Serena Wu (purveyors of fine Asian-American family satire sites My Mom Is a Fob and My Dad Is a Fob), we discussed how we played with race online. Christian and I hit it off big-time, and by the end of the panel, people in the audience were demanding we do a show, any show, together.

  For this book, I visited Christian in his Los Angeles apartment. He really does love Asian food and really does live in Koreatown. In his living room, with him seated in front of a map of North America, I asked him how white people had responded to Stuff White People Like.

  Anything I write about, people are going to be furious about, and more often than not, it’s white people who are angry about it. They’re angrier than anybody about it.